Birds of a feather

On Saturday, while walking my dog past the school garden, I heard a gentle "quack, quack" and to my delight, I spotted a male and female duck swimming sedately across our pond.  I stood and watched them for a minute or two, until my dog spied them and had to bark, making them take flight.

The next day, I did the same route and was pleasantly surprised to find them again in the middle of the pond.  I couldn't wait to tell the children!

I didn't have to wait as I had barely got through the school gates on Tuesday and several children gabbled excitedly about the ducks on our pond. They just loved the idea.

I took the camera up to the pond throughout the day, hoping to catch our ducks swimming, but they had become rather camera shy and spent most of the day (well, when I turned up) hiding in the tall grass or relaxing under the tree. I took pictures anyway as I was excited as the kids and wanted to blog it straightaway.  Mrs Whitley also managed to take photos of the ducks actually in the pond, but we can't figure out how to download from her mobile. (I really need to go on a technology course!).  So it looks like that we have adopted two ducks (or rather they have adopted us!) and they find our pond rather desirable.  Lets hope they stay for the summer - though someone did mention that we may get ducklings!

The male duck in the grass

MORE SPORTSWEAR FOR OUR SCARECROWS PLEASE

We and the children are still requiring a large shopping list of sportswear for our Olympic Scarecrows.  As you can see in our previous post, we have made three so far, but are rapidly running out of clothes.  Here are a selection of items to give you some idea of what we are wanting, which would help the children create a great garden feature. So if you have any old sportswear or equipment that you don't want anymore, please let us have first refusal.  Thank you.

SWIMWEAR

100 METRES RUNNING GEAR

ATHLETIC TRACKSUIT

HORSE RIDER

If you go down to the garden today, you're sure of a big surprise.......

Mrs Whitley starts off with our first scarecrow

Summer and Ellis supervise

You're too convincing, Cameron!

The Scarecrow Making Crew

What a team!

Chloe, Codie and Isabelle with our  running  scarecrow

Yacine has a go!

Our horse riding Olympian

Isabelle checks out the garden

Cobie and Mariyyah proudly display their scarecrow

With a big thanks from Pudsey Agricultural, with their donation of straw and sacking, we started making the first of our Olympic scarecrows.  The children were really excited and loved sorting out the clothes and dressing them.  Then we put them in the garden beds.  We have two runners and a horse rider (though on closer inspection, he is actually sitting on a sheep - a donation from Mrs Smith's class from an earlier art project). However from a distance, he looks the real deal.  We need to get some wooden crosses to make them stand up, but I think we were so excited to make them and keen to see what they looked like, that we overlooked that fact. So two of our Olympians are sitting on the ground - either warming up or recovering from the 400 metre race. (Well that's their excuse and they're sticking to it!)  The children were keen to have their photos taken with the scarecrows and Cameron even tried to be one! It's been a really fun afternoon with a lovely easterly breeze keeping us cool.

Pictures of our Garden Market

Selling flowers on our market stall

Even the staff come and buy!

Pudsey Agricultural

A big thank you to Pudsey Agricultural who have donated a large amount of straw and hessian sacks for our long awaited scarecrow project.  We are very grateful for this kind gesture and can't wait to start next week!

Summer has arrived!

Oh boy!  This is crazy weather!  We Brits should be grateful for this wall to wall sunshine, but when your thermometer in your polytunnel hits 110 degrees in old money (45 degrees to the children) and you can't actually bear going into it, you know our weather has gone extreme.

We were in woolly jumpers last week, fretting if we would ever get a crop of tomatoes or strawberries and now our mantra is WATER, WATER, WATER!

Back to normal routine, we managed to get 2 groups of children out today.  We planted our sunflowers against the polytunnel wall and watered everything in sight.  In between, we sat on the logs under the cool shadow of the garden trees and gulped vast quantities of water.  Even Carol off the BBC Breakfast Weather claimed it would be 25 degrees in the shade! Phew!

Again, we set up the flower stall.  I manned it this morning until Mr Lucas opened the school gates and a herd of children swarmed around me and took over.  This afternoon we had Joshua, Josh and Freya helping out with the selling and they actually got a bit of market stall patter going, before grabbing plants and heading into the crowds.  They came back triumphant, clutching 50p's and celebrating a successful sale.

The flower stall will be set up again tomorrow for the last time for parents and staff.  We are hoping that we will be able to offer vegetables very soon if this weather keeps up!

Leon cooling down under the trees

Robbie doing a sterling job

Thirsty work, Josh!

Leon back to work, planting sunflowers

Edie watering the pots

Edie working hard

Ralph Thoresby School's Enrichment Day

A few months ago, I invited Ralph Thoresby High School to bring a few of their pupils to our school garden as part of their Enrichment Day.  The whole school takes part in various projects to learn about different aspects of life outside of school and a party of Year 9 students plus their teachers came up to work with us.

As usual, Mrs Whitley did a sterling job and had organised a delivery of flowers from Redhall, Leeds City Council's nursery in North Leeds and together with Miss Morgan, they spent the morning with the students, planting up tubs of flowers in red, white and blue for our front entrance, ready for our Jubilee celebrations next week and beyond.  Then there was a massive planting session of all our seedlings in the polytunnel out into the beds (at long last!), lots of weeding and tidying, planting our playground tubs up with petunias and many other jobs.  We had been so far behind with the weather that we were starting to fret how we were going to catch up, but Ralph Thoresby saved the day.  We can't thank them enough and were very impressed with their hard work and commitment.  It was a scorching hot day, but the children just kept working. We are now fairly up to date and don't feel so hassled.  So thank you again Ralph Thoresby from all of us at Cookridge and a thank you from me to Mrs Whitley and Miss Morgan for spending the whole day with them and overseeing everything.  You have all been stars.

Taking a well earned rest

Part of the Ralph Thoresby Team

Some of the petunias

More petunias from Redhall!

I did get out myself after a morning in the classroom and meet the staff and students.  Pathetically I managed to pot up one tray of sunflowers.  My excuse then is that I went and asked Sophie, Willow, Thailan and Ali if they would like to help me sell some flowers on the playground market, which they absolutely leapt at with undisguised enthusiasm. They carried several trays of nasturtiums, marigolds, alyssums and mesembryanthemums (also known as Livingstone's daisies or Ice Plants - which I call them as I can never remember their full proper name!) down to the playground.  So at 3pm, we were busy selling them at 50p a pot and quite a few went, but I will set up the stall again in the morning and will do so until the end of the week! No doubt, I will have a huge band of willing helpers wanting to help me out on our stall.  The kids absolutely love selling - I just sit back and let them deal with the sales and the money.  The more adventurous ones will start up a market stall patter, yelling across the playground "Come and get your plants here - only 50p!"  I just love every single minute of it.

p.s. I have a confession to make.  After suddenly realising that I should take some photos and retrieving the camera, I discovered to my horror,  that the wretched thing had drained its batteries and had no energy to take photos. A fumbled exchange of batteries ensued whereby my intended subjects had then wandered off back to the garden. Stuffing the camera into Mrs Whitley's unsuspecting hands as she passed, I hoped she could do better.  Unfortunately, the batteries I had replaced where equally useless, but Mrs W managed to save the day.  However, I note with dismay that the photos I took (or I thought I'd took) have disappeared completely.  Not really addressing the problem of a few week's back when I let a child loose with said camera, I have to put my hands up and own up that technology and I do not have a good connection and hence we have only four photos of a really superb day.  I hang my head in shame.

Sorry

Yes, we are still here!  No, I haven't stopped blogging (don't panic) but last week I was in Whitby with Class 8 on a school residential and Mrs Whitley and Miss Morgan kept calm and carried on in the garden.  As I tend to do the blog each week and I had already dumped a lot of garden stuff on Mrs Whitley and Miss Morgan, while I disappeared yet again, I felt rather guilty asking them to blog too. So hence there was a pause last week.  However we are back this week with a vengeance, with already a lot happening and it's only Wednesday!

Last week, the weather was very unseasonal again - cold and rainy, really not the best weather to work outside, but the ladies and the children reported that they had managed to put some of the plants into the beds, finally achieving a task that should of happened at least 2 months ago.

Whitby was lovely, but we were all dressed in winter woollies - layers, hats, scarves and gloves.  It was rather cool and the rain caught up with us on Thursday. The skies were leaden and grey and we were all wondering if there would ever be a summer.  Then by Monday, we were sweltering in 20 degree plus heat, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and we had shed our layers of chunky clothing down to t-shirts and light trousers, looking for some shade and respite, rather than hot chocolate and a warm radiator!  What a crazy country this is. From one extreme to the other, with only us gardeners quietly celebrating that finally we are able to work outside in shirt sleeves and actually put our bulging polytunnel contents outside for the first time in months, without the fear of a frost killing all our hard work!

Perks of the Job

Last week, I mentioned that we had cut some rhubarb and that I wheelbarrowed it as far as our Reception class before it was sold out.

A few days later, a jar of marmalade appeared at our front office for me!  Put in a little gift bag, there was a delightful note from little Gina Warrior's mum, thanking me for the rhubarb and to try the rhubarb and orange preserve she had made.  I was really chuffed to bits by this gesture and the following morning, my usual slice of toast was smothered in Mrs Warrior's marmalade.  It was delicious, so much so that my family, who usually dislike rhubarb, pestered me for a try and were equally impressed.  The jar failed to make to the end of the weekend, and so Mrs Warrior found me waiting for her, begging for more.  A jar went to Mrs Whitley for a try and she opened it in the staffroom, for everybody to have a taste.  There were a lot of "mmmm's" and "that's lovely" that I fear I will be approaching Mrs Warrior with a rather large order and her having to set up a small cottage industry! So, again I thank Mrs Warrior, not only for her generosity, but for being a wonderful purveyor of rhubarb and orange marmalade!  And here's the evidence!

As you can see, my photographic skills are somewhat to be desired,  but here are two jars of  the rhubarb and orange marmalade!

With the children, we harvested the rest of the rhubarb and bagged it up the next day.  By this time, we had pre-orders and ended up taking it to our customers around the school!   Quite impressive really.  Perhaps I need to tell Mrs Whitley to drop the vegetables and become part of the rhubarb triangle of Yorkshire!

Garden Frustrations

Good job!

These two were a great team

Millisa busy potting up her Jubilee pot

Another week passes, and yet more rain, which seems to occur on Thursday and Friday afternoons between the hours of 1pm and 3pm.  This is rather inconvenient as that's the time when we garden with the children and  it rather scuppers our plans.  Our beds remain bare - with the threat of frosts last weekend, we just daren't put any of our seedlings into the ground and they remain, bursting from their pots, in our polytunnel. Apart from that, the constant rain has made the ground claggy and who wants to plant out in the rain? Our plan of having a four week cycle of plants has firmly crashed at the first hurdle.

So the children have been busy planting red, blue and white flowers into large planters, to create our Jubilee theme.  These will be placed in the front entrance of our school and will be a fantastic Jubilee Celebration display. The children have really enjoyed the planting and there are several pots ready to go up to our front door.

Robbie and Leon working together

Interserve popped in today to have a final look at our pond before they start work on it after the half term in June.  We've asked for some fencing, a better pathway around the pond and the building of two pond dipping platforms as well as some rotivation of the surrounding grass to create our wildlife meadow.  It's great that we've got a start date now and something to look forward to.

WANTED!

Could you bring to school the following items for forthcoming projects - please!

OLD NEWWSPAPERS FOR MAKING ECO FLOWER POTS

OLD CLOTHES - SPORTING ESPECIALLY (FOR OUR SCARECROWS!)

THANK YOU